Five 2026 Polls Find Most Americans Say AI Moves Too Fast

In five national polls in 2026, the share of American adults saying AI is moving too fast or should slow down ranged from 55% to 77%, according to Tech Policy Press. The low came from CBS News/YouGov in mid-September. The high came from Quinnipiac the following week.

The spread hides a sturdier signal. The Economist/YouGov had 71% of 1,381 registered voters saying AI is advancing too quickly in early October. AP-NORC had 64% of 2,140 adults saying the same in late September. Fox News, back in January, had 59% of registered voters calling it too fast. The question wording differs. The direction does not.

The partisan gap is real but narrower than the headline. In the Economist/YouGov poll, 82% of Democrats, 74% of independents and 59% of Republicans say AI is moving too quickly.

That gap now has a political venue. Justin Hendrix writes that 'industry leaders including Anthropic's Dario Amodei called for moderating the pace of AI development' after incidents involving AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, and that 'the Trump administration has rejected calls for a slowdown.' The president, quoted in the piece: 'We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins. And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up.'

Underneath the pace question, baseline sentiment has barely moved. Pew's June poll had 52% of 3,488 adults more concerned than excited about AI, essentially flat from 50% a year earlier. Quinnipiac's harm reading has climbed further: 53% now say AI will do more harm, up from 44% in April 2025.